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Schools’ fates decided

Eugene School Board votes to close four elementaries as part of broad cuts

By Mark Baker

The Register-Guard

Appeared in print: Thursday, Feb. 3, 2011, page A1

Parker and Crest Drive elementary schools? Gone.

Meadowlark Elementary School students? You will be heading to Willagillespie Elementary School in the fall.

Coburg Elementary School? You are also closing, but the Coburg Community Charter School has been approved by the Eugene School Board, and it will be housed in the same building as the elementary school.

Charlemagne at Fox Hollow French immersion school? You are staying where you are — for now.

All were part of an unprecedented amount of cost savings approved by the school board Wednesday night — estimated to save somewhere in the neighborhood of $24 million for the 2011-12 school year — that will also include notifying between 55 and 84 teachers no earlier than Feb. 23 that they have lost their jobs, issuing pink slips to 62 full-time administrators and classified staff before the end of the school year, and using $5 million in reserve funds to stem the bleeding.

Twin Oaks Elementary School, which was targeted for closure in the fall of 2012 on outgoing Superintendent George Russell’s list of budget-cutting recommendations, got something of a reprieve, with the board voting to delay a vote on the school’s fate in light of Russell’s recommendation to place a $130 million facilities bond on the May 17 ballot. The bond money would be used to build a new Roosevelt Middle School, among many upgrades, but also to expand McCornack Elementary School, which would accommodate Twin Oaks’ students under Russell’s plan.

The recommendation to close schools was one that board members have agonized over for months. In the end, the seven-member board voted unanimously to close the four elementary schools — but only after members Jim Torrey and Mary Walston supported an amendment made by Torrey to keep Parker and Crest Drive open for one more year.

“For me, this is in some ways a truly heartbreaking decision,” board member Jennifer Geller, a former Parker parent, told a crowd of more than 100 who gathered at the district’s Education Center, as she read from a prepared statement. “But we have to balance the budget. And we have excess capacity in the south region. So I hope that my friends and the teachers I respect so much will know ... that I am not voting with my heart, but with my head.”

Although it saves only an estimated $1 million annually in operating costs, the school closure/consolidation proposal was by far the most controversial and emotional of Russell’s recommendations, which he first announced in November. More than half the audience at Wednesday’s meeting waited more than two hours to hear the board’s vote on that issue — and when it was all said and done, Parker, Crest Drive and Meadowlark supporters filed out of the meeting room, down the hallway and into the cool night air.

“I don’t know,” Crest Drive parent Neil Moyer said. “It became apparent pretty early on (in the process) that the school board appeared to be a social club, and they were going to rubber-stamp whatever the recommendations were. Only two board members tried to do anything about it. Everybody else was just fine with closing schools.”

Board member Alicia Hays made a motion to approve Russell’s recommendation to close Parker, Crest Drive and Coburg elementary schools, and merge Meadowlark with Willagillespie, as well as relocating Charlemagne at Fox Hollow to the Parker building. But there was no second to her motion.

Instead, board member Beth Gerot moved to do all of the above, but keep Charlemagne at Fox Hollow at its current site on Mahalo Drive in south Eugene. That motion passed unanimously, as did all the others, but not before Torrey’s amendment to save Crest Drive and Parker for a year — and much discussion by a board often confused by all the different scenarios.

“The reason that I am supporting leaving Charlemagne at Fox Hollow has nothing to do that it’s a special place, but that it’s going to cost money to move it to another location,” Gerot explained.

Russell tweaked some of his recommendations prior to the meeting. He called the latest recommendations Wednesday his “final, final recommendations,” as the audience gently chuckled.

Russell has said all along that the main piece of the cost-savings puzzle was the student-to-teacher staffing ratio at each school, since those will determine the number of teacher layoffs, class sizes and the amount of reserve funds the district will need to use to balance its budget in 2011-12.

In November, Russell talked about increasing the ratio, which now stands at 24:1 for grades K-3 and 26:1 for grades 4-12, by four at the elementary school level, five at the middle school level and six at the high school level. But news in December that state school funding could remain at the status quo level prompted Russell to revise his recommendation to change the ratio by three or four students across the board.

Before Wednesday’s meeting, Russell changed the recommendation to a staffing ratio of “2.5 or 4,” and the board voted to do so. Those numbers are where the 55 to 84 teacher layoffs come into play, an estimated cost savings to the district of between $4.6 million to $7 million. Staffing ratio notices go out to schools on Feb. 23, and schools will be asked to develop two staffing plan scenarios for next fall, district spokeswoman Kerry Delf said.

The two different scenarios give schools flexibility that will be determined by factors the district cannot yet know, such as negotiations with the teachers’ union and the possibility of a city income tax for schools that could net the district between $10 million and $12 million, Russell said.

The board also voted to approve Russell’s recommendations that the district impose between nine and 12 unpaid furlough days in 2011-12, and seek to negotiate pay and benefit freezes with employee groups.

In addition to approving the Coburg charter school, the board followed Russell’s recommendations by not approving charter school applications for the College of Knowledge, a proposed high school for at-risk teens, and the International School of Modern Technology, a proposed K-12 school targeted at low-income and minority students.